Monday, November 12, 2012

Morning Briefing: Standing Athwart History

For five years I have consistently maintained that Mitt Romney could not be elected President of the United States. The only thing that changed was Barack Obama's terrible debate performance and I made the unfortunate mistake of going with the herd toward "he can win now." A year ago — to be precise, November 8th of last year — I wrote that Mitt Romney would be the nominee, conservatism would die, and Barack Obama would win. Regrettably, I told you so.

As I wrote would happen, Mitt Romney tried to blur lines with Barack Obama. He did not defend social conservatism, but let those attacks go unanswered. He did not articulate strong fiscal conservatism and he never repudiated Romneycare, thereby failing to make any credible attacks on Obamacare.

Conservatives and conservative institutions who embraced him early on are now scrambling to make excuses. They were so invested in a failure they cannot bring themselves to admit Mitt Romney and his campaign were failures. Mitt Romney's campaign was, to Republicans, what green energy is to Barack Obama.

Rumors are swirling that many Republican Governors are thinking of going wobbly on setting up state level healthcare exchanges to comply with Obamacare, instead of forcing the federal government to set up a federal exchange.

The deadline to notify Washington is November 16, 2012.

Michael Cannon has an excellent must read on why no state should do so.

Further, the Republican Party controls 30 Governors' Mansions.

Most importantly, as Michael Cannon notes, "defaulting to a federal exchange exempts a state's employers from the employer mandate."

I think it is incumbent on each and every conservative and conservative organization, with this deadline upon us, to make a very simple pledge:

We will not support the re-election of any Republican Governor who creates a healthcare exchange in his or her state. Further, we will oppose for the nomination to the Presidency, any Republican who creates a healthcare exchange in his or her state.

Last week I posted two essays on why I believe the best way for the GOP to address the wildly misnamed "Fiscal Cliff" is to walk away. The impact of doing so, according to the CBO, will be a temporary downturn in the economy which will make the economy stronger in the long run. Fiscal impact aside it is rarely in your interests to cut a bad deal.

One of the things the left is really go about is coming up with catchy slogans. Some of them are rather unfortunate, like calling your plan to stamp out inflation the Moral Equivalent of War (MEOW), some are ridiculous, like the War on Women, but the fact remains that if you can name something you go a long way towards determining how people view the subject. (As an aside, none of these compare with naming your terrorist group the Moro Independent Liberation Front or MILF. Don't they have porn in the Philippines?) Did FDR illegally arm Great Britain in violation of the Neutrality Act and the expressed will of Congress? Or did the United States become the Arsenal of Democracy? . . . please click here for the rest of the post →

5.Campaign Sources: The Romney Campaign was a Consultant Con Job

If you spend your time watching politics and haven't been hiding in a deep depression since Tuesday, you've probably been hearing a lot about "ORCA." According to the Washington Post, ORCA "was designed as a first-of-its-kind tool to employ smartphones to mobilize voters, allowing them to microtarget which of their supporters had gone to the polls."

confess, it is fascinating to watch the Republican consultants responsible for the Orca system debacle try and explain its inherent short comings away.

Let's begin with the first problem they face. They put an untested piece of technology in the field the day of the election. Let me repeat that-they put an untested piece of technology in the field the day of the election.

You might do that if you wanted to fail a junior high science experiment, but not a Presidential election. Technology is a wonderful thing. And it is buggy. A small piece of code here or there can cause an entire system to either slow down or crash. And yet the Romney campaign and the RNC committed to funneling all of its volunteers, upwards of 30,000, into it for election day.. . . please click here for the rest of the post →

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